How Hard It Is to Find a Good Ice Dam Removal Company in an Emergency?
If you’ve got an ice dam, it’s crucial that you research reputable ice dam removal companies, call the best, make an appointment, and commit to that.
The best time to do that is before you’ve got a leak to deal with. Knowing the signs of an ice dam about to turn into a disaster is a great way to save yourself some money and heartache. It’s also a way to improve your chances of getting help from a good ice dam removal company when you need help, rather than when you have to wait in line and bite your nails because every hour means more costly repairs.
When your house starts leaking, others’ homes usually start leaking at the same time. They’re all in the middle of the same heavy snowfall, and most homes have subpar insulation and ventilation.
We know that in part because we get tsunami waves of phone calls, all at once. The ice dam removal business is proof that “when it rains, it pours.” It happens here in Minnesota every year. It happened in the record-breaking winter of 2015 in the Boston area, too. Here’s an excerpt from a Boston Globe article published in February of 2015:
Connors said some contractors he called did not answer or had voicemail boxes that were full. His neighbor, Ed Gonsalves, said his son is trying to find a contractor to clear the icicles from his third floor, where water has been leaking in.
“We haven’t even got an estimate,” he said of his attempts to remove the ice dams. “We haven’t even got a call back from them yet.”
While there is no damage where Gonsalves, 70, and his wife live on the upper floors of a two-family home, he said half of the kitchen ceiling in his first-floor unit needs to be repaired after water seeped in.
My company, Ice Dam Guys®, was there. Mine was probably was one of the voicemail boxes Mr. Gonsalves couldn’t get through to. I wasn’t doing it maliciously, and neither were the other companies he couldn’t reach. The problem was and is that everyone in town who offers ice dam removal (or claims to) gets hundreds of calls an hour or more.
Our voicemail and e-mail inboxes can only handle Warp 9 for so long. Even with several full-time receptionists whose sole job is to take calls and go through messages, we still never have enough time or resources to answer every email or voicemail, and sometimes we can’t even receive all of them.
My blog and FAQs page have several posts on how you can spot ice dam trouble before everyone else notices. In particular, icicles can alert you to when ice dam trouble is nigh. If you can catch the problem early you won’t be that person who is out there desperately trying to get an ice dam removal pro on the phone when your ceiling is falling down. If you wait until your house is actually leaking before you call someone, you’re only likely to reach an out-of-work contractor who jumped on the ice dam removal bandwagon with dollar signs in his eyes, little experience, a shingle-eating pressure washer, and no insurance policy to protect your assets if he tumbles off your roof.
Don’t wait until you’ve got water inside your home to you make the decision to research and reach out to a pro.
